The country can improve outcomes for
medical conditions at the same time as cutting health care costs by
50 percent, with ideas that are already known, according to
Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill.

"We can do this, not by
hammering providers, but by working on the system,"
O'Neill said. He made his remarks Tuesday during a speech at
the Health Center, which was sponsored by the Connecticut Business
Industry Association and the Metro Hartford Regional Economic
Alliance.

After his speech, O'Neill toured
the Health Center and met with members of the faculty, area
businessmen, and health care professionals for an hour-long
roundtable discussion about patient safety, medical records, and
medical errors.

"In any great organization, you
need to be able to answer yes to three questions," said
O'Neill. "'Are you treated with dignity and
respect?' 'Are you given the information you need to make a
contribution to your institution that gives meaning to your
life?' and, 'Did anyone notice that you did it?' If
you

can't say yes to all these
questions, you are probably not going to be a great
organization."

One of O'Neill's
accomplishments at Alcoa, where he was chairman and CEO before
joining the Treasury Department, was to help make it the safest
company in the world. "With 140,000 people, there were seven
lost work days," he said. "The Treasury Department, with
160,000 employees had about 2,000 lost work days last year, and
that's in a paper environment. The lost work rate in the
medical profession is 25 times higher than at Alcoa, where the
metal is 2,000 degrees and there are big heavy pieces of moving
machinery."

The lessons learned in industry can
be applied to health and medical care, he added.

"We've been through a tough
18 months," O'Neill noted, citing the bursting of the
dot-com bubble, the terrorist attacks, and the crisis created by
corporate fraud.

He credited this
Administration's tax relief and job creation legislation with
boosting the economy and said he continues to be optimistic about
the state of the American economy, predicting growth of 3 to 3.5
percent by the end of the year.

"We have no inflation and
interest rates are the lowest they have been in 40 years," he
said.

O'Neill said there is a need to
enact terrorist risk insurance. There are $8 billion in
construction projects on hold because financing is stalled for lack
of insurance against terrorist attacks, he said, yet the president
can't do anything without an act of Congress.

"I think a case can be made
that terrorism events should be paid for by all the people,"
he said.

The Congress also needs to approve
legislation that creates a new Homeland Security Department, he
continued. "The threat is real. We need a department that is
focused on homeland security," said
O'Neill."

His stop at the Health Center was
part of a trip through New England aimed at building support for
President Bush's economic agenda.